Word o' the day

二日酔い: futsukayoi, hangover. Literally "second day drunkeness" or similar. Dunno, made me chuckle for some reason.

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Hello all, sorry for the lack of recent updates, I have not really been doing much of note and have been very busy with study. The course is certainly intensive; we are ploughing through the textbook at a fair old clip and it is quite hard to take everything in, and even harder to force your brain to use the stuff you've learned in any kind of practical sense. We seem to have a test of some kind every other week. I definitely seem to be getting better (slowly), it's just frustrating how much effort saying even the simplest things takes.

Last Sunday I went to Inuyama (literally, "dog mountain") with a couple of friends to do some sightseeing and such. It's about an hour away on the regular train and features Japan's oldest standing castle, built in the 1500s. It is also well known for the Inuyama festival, which takes place in April and in which huge, 3-story floats, bedecked in lamps and mechanical puppets are wheeled around the streets (by hand) to flute and drum music. The highlight of the trip for me was the incredibly beautiful Uraku-en tea ceremony garden, originally built in the 1600s. Members of the public are allowed to walk round the garden and I think they occasionally hold actual tea ceremonies which you can take part in. There weren't any going on when we were there, which is probably for the better as they are very involved and time-consuming and require study and practice, even on the part of the guests.

So yeah, largely uneventful few weeks really. Today I went for a bit of a walk, ended up looking around a second-hand clothes shop on the other side of town that I quite like. The in-store music was interesting, and they played Mr. Roboto by Styx: good to see the Japanese have a sense of humor. Weather has been changeable, it's either brilliant sunshine or it's raining. Don't have any plans at the moment but will (try!) and continue to keep you all updated as to how things are going...

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頭が痛い ：（

The classes appear to be getting ever more difficult. I am coping but am growing ever more frustrated at being unable to express myself properly. Hopefully I just need to give it time.

Have not quite been sleeping properly recently and at lunchtime today I realised that I was going to need bad, carbohydrate-heavy food if I was going to make it through the afternoon, so I took myself for my first McDonalds since coming here. Thanks to the joys of corporate branding, the Maccy Ds in Japan are much the same as anywhere else in the world, even with the same slogan (except it's usually pronounced "I'm rubbing it!" here, natch). The choice of food and drink is slightly different - for instance they have recently brought out the Ebipuri, which is a kind of filet-o-shrimp. In typically hypocritical fashion, the advertising for the Ebipuri features doe-eyed fashion model Yuri Ebihara - she is slim, gorgeous and has perfect skin and teeth; obviously a great representation of your average McDonalds customer then!! 8-) Of course she could also be construed as a good choice as her surname has "ebi" (shrimp) in it, but still.

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Excuse the lack of updates - been busy studying and not much of note happened this week.

Finally got the courage up to go and get my hair cut today, as I hadn't had one in several months and it was getting a bit Bob Dylan-esque. Went to a nice little place called Mitsui, in the middle of a residental area. Many hand gestures later and I was under the scissors, and even managed a very basic conversation with my barber about the weather, where I was from etc. Relaxing experience all in all.

Yesterday evening yet to the Zigzag (the campus bar run by Declan, the head of the international office: he is Irish/Australian and as such enjoys the odd drink or two) and wound up watching the FA Cup final. Made me feel a bit homesick. Very surreal watching English football with Japanese commentary. Saturday did nothing in particular, had a test on Friday, think it went OK, but you never know really.

After the test I went with my class to a Brazillian pizza restaurant (one of my class is Brazillian and she works there). Had a great time, didn't quite know what to expect from Brazilian pizza but it was incredibly nice. Okazaki seems to have a large Brazillian population which is several generations deep; I have no idea why.

Well, that's been pretty much it really. Must get back to studying my verb conjugation. I'm going to try and go to City Hall tomorrow to pick up my alien registration card (the name of this document is the gaikokujin tourokushomeishou: nice and easy to remember, then). I've been there once before but this will be my first time going alone, so I am slightly nervous and anticipate many hand gestures.

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Here comes the rain (doo-n-doo-doo)

It's Sunday afternoon and I've just woken up (well an hour or two ago, anyway), and the weather has gone from blazing sunshine (Fri) to warm but overcast (Sat) to well and truly raining it's ass off (today). Of course, being British I am somewhat accustomed to this kind of thing. I don't know when the rainy/monsoon season is supposed to start, so maybe this is it.

Didn't go to Kyoto yesterday in the end (hopefully I'll go at some point in the future - I really want to see Ryoan-ji in particular), so I've had a very restful Golden week all in all. Back to the grindstone tomorrow though.

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